


Alis Propriis Volat

by Corvus_no_Genmu



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Worm - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Horror, Apocalypse, Dreams and Nightmares, Endbringers, Halloween, Heroes, Horror, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Nightmares, Nightmares Made Real, Oneshot, Psychological Horror, Ragnarok, Villains, solar eclipse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvus_no_Genmu/pseuds/Corvus_no_Genmu
Summary: When the whole of the Endbringer emerged, it was met with a sudden inhalation of air and a heavy weight of disbelief, horror, and awe.Those that had come before it had been abominations, malformations, and singularly ugly in their overall shape and formation. Behemoth, a cyclopean titan of stone and flame, a mishmash of the legends of similar giants that arose the mountains and plowed forth the valleys. Leviathan, a reptilian humanoid, arisen from the depths of the oceans where nature’s nightmarish designs dwelled yet unseen. The Simurgh, a blasphemy of an angel, an image once conceived as an icon of hope and of prayer remade into a siren’s song of damnation and desecration.This Endbringer though, was different from its brethren.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	1. "She flies with her own wings."

_"In all known time there has never been a greater monster or miracle than the human being." - Bryant H. McGill_

It began as most things tend to do. It started small, inconsequential, and nigh unnoticeable one cold, January morning. In a world devastated by loss on a daily basis, where a singular good day excluded the numerical loss of countless thousands of human lives, a precious few suddenly snuffed out were as droplets drawn from the sea. So small, so mediocre, no one could have known it for what it was or what it truly was capable of because as all things that have come before and those countless many that would follow in its wake…

It was learning.

The first true inkling began when it was no longer the loss of mere ants but an actual queen, or rather, a king of a hive. There was little love for the city of Ellisburg and its monstrous citizens born and crafted from the flesh of humanity and malformed to a madman’s whims. It was a constant thought in the back of the mind, a looming threat of a predator caged only because the door was never truly locked to begin with, that it could leave whenever the whim struck it. They forgot that such a door could be opened in kind, that for all that the Goblin King and his horrendous horde could depart, so too could one enter into the boundaries of his kingdom.

How was the rest of the world to know that the inexplicable and abrupt demise of the self-entitled Goblin King was not one born from his own deranged hubris when such an idea was the stuff of madness? No sane soul would enter such a place so logic dictated that it had to have been one of the Goblin King’s own spawn that did him in. That the last of his oft organically recycled creations, his children as he so proudly decreed upon donning his crown of flesh and bone, had finally turned tooth and claw upon their maker before they turned on each other?

What evidence did the world have that fateful morning, when the light of another day revealed a kingdom turned to ash with naught but a few spires of half-crushed stone and melted steel to stand as gravestones for the multitude of souls lost to a monster’s awakening? Smoke colored the sky and painted it black with the ashes of the city that had been razed in the span of a single night, and not a soul had been awake or aware of what the cause had been only the effect.

The Goblin King was dead and the nightmare of his existence, such as it was, had presumably ended.

The people of the world could not have known then that the dream, such as it may have been, was what had ended and that the nightmare, the truest and vilest sort, had only just begun.

In the days that followed the death of the self-entitled Goblin King, theories came and went from the credited and the imaginative alike. From the sensible to the incredible to the plausible to the deniable, fact and fiction became as one and were summarily separated all the same. For though no one person could attest to the who, the how, the why, or even the what, the one irrefusable fact remained as a pinnacle above all others. The terrors of an S-Class threat had been ended and the people of the world heaved a collective sigh of relief when it was affirmed that the Goblin King was well and truly dead.

The second time, barely a month later, had been different from the first insomuch that there was one lone soul to witness what had transpired. That this witness was none other than a member of the recently deceased Slaughterhouse Nine, the infamous and rightly feared Bonesaw herself, left far too much skepticism for anyone to believe any words she had left to speak. Not that she had anything with which to speak with when they found her and what remained of the Nine.

“We are dead…” Such was what could be read by the movements of her lips, her voice gone away to the wind where her screams echoed still in the remains of the latest town to fall victim to the whim of a traveling band of murderers and psychopaths.

The site of Bonesaw’s capture had been a long stretch of road some several miles out from what remained of the small, non-descript town. Remains of course being a very generous term as, just like Ellisburg before it, there was not but ashes and melted stone and steel left of what had once been a community of thousands. The only evidence that the rest of the Nine had perished with the town were Bonesaw’s own broken admittance to the fact, the only words she could not speak over and over again, and what few remains that could be positively identified as belonging to some of the Nine.

Save for one.

In the center of the town, where a mayoral office once stood before it had been shredding amidst a storm of glass and summarily set aflame down to its foundations, there was a flagpole. Strangely untouched by the intensity of the flames that still left the ground burning hot even so many days later when the last of the flames had long since extinguished. It stood tall and unbending as it bore the weight of Jack Slash proudly at its peak, dull and round and nonetheless impaled with extreme prejudice through the man’s back and out through his stomach. Yet it was not by way of impalement that he had perished.

Bonesaw had worked her magic upon Jack Slash, more so than even herself. It would take serious work to kill him and such had been done in spades. He had been butchered in every sense of the word, pieces of him ripped and torn asunder by something that had neither the patience nor the skill to do so with precision.

They tried to question her, those first days after her capture, but Bonesaw was as the grave, silent and unmoving. She would not attempt to speak when spoken to. Did not blink when lights were shone into her eyes. Even the touch of gloved hands, needles, and several more things aside, didn’t earn so much as a twitch from the young girl. She sat motionlessly, living only in that she breathed and that her heart still beat within her chest.

No one of significance amongst the PRT, from the mundane to the parahuman, gave her or her perpetual silence more than a passing thought. Her silent words little more than that of a mad dog driven madder by the loss of her second family, or so the puppets of the PRT would say. Their unseen puppeteers were hardly better, not even giving the poor girl that much.

After all, she was one whom had been groomed to be one of, if not the worst, serial murderer to ever grace the Earth. Had been cultivated by the likes of Jack Slash to be if not his outright successor than at the very least his parting gift to the world. Of course, her own summation did little credit to what had remained of her sanity. For all that she had been broken and remade by the worst that humanity could ever conceive, had killed and tortured countless lives under the pretense of being a good girl, Bonesaw had seen something that had left her completely and irrevocably broken beyond even what the worst of the Nine could ever dream of.

It was by chance that the PRT found a means of getting a reaction out of her.

When she had been captured, it was by parahuman means that she had been brought in. Heroes, in their vibrantly colored suits and costumes. Machines in draconic hues of steel and painted metals as Dragon transported and contained her through various mechanical suits. When questions remained unanswered and Dragon and Panacea both assured that her enhancements had been removed to the last, she was to be handed over to the PRT and, eventually, to the Birdcage.

As the door opened before her, Bonesaw’s eyes fell upon the soldiers, all of them men and women, buried beneath armor of deepest black and darkest obsidians.

The sound she made would haunt those brave men and women to their dying day.

The doors slammed shut and when she lost sight of them, Riley dropped like a lifeless doll, silent and unmoving as she had been before but for one difference. Her heart, once so calm and steady, now sounded as a war drum within her chest and her breath, a ragged gasp for air as her eyes stared wide and unblinking up at the lights, as though it would burn away whatever daymare plagued her. Blood dripped from the corners of her mouth, her throat damaged anew and again beyond repair save for parahuman means.

Following this, further attempts were tried to varying degrees of success to try and gauge the cause of such a profoundly terrifying reaction. In the end, it was something so simple it was almost ridiculous in its normalcy. Somehow, someway, Bonesaw, one of the most feared members in the entirety of the Slaughterhouse Nine, had become melanophobic.

Blackness, pure and dark as moonless night, frightened her to such a degree that the tiniest piece of polished obsidian had her screaming to the highest heavens and doing everything in her power to get as far away from it as was possible, even—no—especially if it resulted in greater harm to herself in the process. The moment it was out of sight, she was as a puppet freshly cut from its strings. Further attempts were met with further self-harm to herself in ever increasingly mad bids for escape.

Caught up in this bizarre behavior by the butcherer of hundreds, though by some grace of a long-dead God not the literal Butcher herself, notice of another, far more alarming symptom that ailed the girl remained ever oblivious even when it was outright obvious. It would not be until the Heartbreaker himself was as ashes on the wind and the majority of his territory similarly awash in hellfire that they would take notice it.

The reflection of the young woman born as Riley in place of the girl christened as Bonesaw.

What began with a king and a slaughterhouse swiftly moved on to equal if not greater threats. The Ash Beast disappeared from the desert of Africa, little left to show for its existence but the burning trail of destruction that was its tread and a sea of flames that burned brightly amidst the shifting tides of the desert sands.

The very heart of Heartbreaker’s lands was little more than a deep crater, a literal lake of ashes and destruction on a city-wide scale that left no one, the damned and the innocent alike, alive but for those who had been fortunate enough to live well outside the borders, and thus the range, of Heartbreaker’s latest dwelling. With such wanton destruction dealt to ensure the deaths of singular S-Class threats, many began to suspect that this was not the work of a mere human being, but a monster of the highest order.

They were right.

It began, as most things are oft to do, rather small. A distant spark on the farthest horizon, little more than an acorn’s circumference in size and yet shining brighter than a newborn star. The noonday sky above darkened as the moon moved to another’s whim, each passing moment allow the tiny spark to swell and to grow until it was as visceral tear in the fabric of space and time. The waters beneath it turned crimson as blood dripped from the gaping wound as alarms sounded across the surface of the world.

Another Endbringer had at long last, come to call in full revelation rather than secret proclamation.

Those who would face it, knowing full well that this could be their last day, awaited it on the distant shores of the city of Brockton Bay. They waited and they watched with baited breaths and quivering hearts as the tear in the open sky remained open and the bloodlike substance continued to spill forth.

It emerged slowly from the gap. One clawed hand massive as that of a god, stretching out and impacting against the bloodied waves bearing the weight of the damnable appendage with little protest. Another emerged, falling just as smoothly upon the surface of the water. When the whole of the Endbringer emerged, it was met with a sudden inhalation of air and a heavy weight of disbelief, horror, and awe.

Those that had come before it had been abominations, malformations, and singularly ugly in their overall shape and formation. Behemoth, a cyclopean titan of stone and flame, a mishmash of the legends of similar giants that arose the mountains and plowed forth the valleys. Leviathan, a reptilian humanoid, arisen from the depths of the oceans where nature’s nightmarish designs dwelled yet unseen. The Simurgh, a blasphemy of an angel, an image once conceived as an icon of hope and of prayer remade into a siren’s song of damnation and desecration.

This Endbringer though, was different from its brethren.

It was, in the simplest of terms, a dragon.

A great and towering example of the species heralded since the Darkest of Ages’ past in the then-yet-to-be-tamed wildlands of Europe, but it was a dragon still, no matter the stature or perhaps even because of it. It bore no mutation of the flesh, no malformation of organs or limbs. In every possible way, it was an animal, a beast, and little else.

So why did its mere presence feel so utterly terrifying to those who saw it?

Because Behemoth was a creature of stone with an aura of burning death. Leviathan a nightmare arisen from the depths with the waters that housed it at its beck and call. The Simurgh an angelic abomination who fell from the stars in cruel mockery of a fallen grace of God. They were of simple shapes, wretched designs, and horrific if not recognizable imagery made up from the nightmares of mankind. They bore a semblance to life but even the most oblivious could see they were not nor had ever been alive, not in the ways that mattered.

This Endbringer was a beast born and bred by the imaginations of mankind across the entirety of the World. There was nary a soul that did not know of the word “dragon” and the majesty such a beast represented. A beast of flame and winged terror to the Western lands, a majestic nobility arising from the waters to the highest of heavens out in the East… A monster, a beast, a legend, a god, and a devil, variable and diverse as only one other species to grace the World could ever be.

It breathed, its scaled chest broadening with its inhalation and collapsing upon exhalation. Its wings twitched to the gentle caress of the wind that moved across the sinew of tightly bound membrane. The great, horned head arose upwards upon a serpentine neck, a tongue of flesh licking lightly upon fangs longer than a full-grown man. Scales, black as the deepest of obsidian, glimmered beneath the muted rays of an eclipsed sun as eyes remained closed in a crystal clear dismissal to what was little more than pests.

For a moment, brief and passing as a sudden thought often is, hope ignited in the hearts of those gathered to face the Endbringer. Tales innumerable told well the stories and the legends of dragons and the knights who slew them dead. Men and women who stood tall against a creature of nightmare and walked away with the head of the beast caught in their iron grasp.

And as quickly as hope had arisen so too did it swiftly die with a quick and terrible realization.

The gaping wound, the tear in the fabrics of reality itself, had not yet closed behind the Endbringer, whom was merely the first of many to emerge from it. Those with the means to see and to hear across the vast distance relayed what they could discern. Descriptions varied by the speaker; words lost as they tried to express the horrors of what they were witnessing through the gaping hole in the fabric of reality itself.

“Horrors… yes… that will do.”

A mediocre name perhaps, plain and rather ordinary in its simplicity but in the current circumstance easily the most fitting name. They ran, they leapt, they flew, and they swam in one giant avalanche of clawed appendages, flaring wings, and each and every one of them some manner of distorted semblance to actual life. They moved in one chaotic mess of raging sinew and bloodied blackened shadows made into corporeal flesh. They were literally tearing each other apart in a mad race to depart from the tear and gather at the clawed feet of the Fourth Endbringer.

The noise the Horrors made was not meant for human ears and many a cape swiftly found their courage dwindling as the cacophony of furious roars, frenzied screams, and terrifying howls grew ever louder as the monstrous horde continued to swell. Theirs was the sound of tearing skies, broiling seas, and the sundering of the land all singing together in a disharmonious choir to the melody of damnation no living soul was meant to hear.

It is the symphony of the Apocalypse, the scream of the World as it tries in vain to bring itself to an End.

Somewhere, lost amidst that sea of heroes and villains, an epiphany is made and given a voice of horrific realization.

“It’s just sitting there.”

It is a whisper, lost amidst the wails, the howls, and the roars, and yet it rings loud and true to all those gathered as it is repeated through braceleted armbands one after the other, but there is no more time to give them further thought.

Behemoth carried forth the earth and unleashed the fires of hell. Leviathan awash the world beneath its tsunamis and torrential downpours. The Simurgh turned the brilliance of ingenuity and made it its own as the air reverberated with the echoes of its maddening song.

This Endbringer brought forth an army of Horrors, abominations both small and great, benign in appearance to hideous in design. What power did it hold to command such forces, to gain such reverence, as to be unto them a king if not a god outright?

The answer was almost foolish in its simplicity.

The great horned head of the Endbringer rose higher into the air, great and terrible wings flapping lightly as it arose to stand upwards upon its hindlegs. Its eyes opened and almost as one, the gathered took a step back.

“Oh God have mercy…”

A foolish sentiment. The Gods, both the Young and the Old, were dead and gone from this world ages ago and even if they were not, even the likes of They would not dare to have such eyes turned upon them.

There was no indifference or alien detachment in those crystalline orbs. There was fury in its gaze, cold as the arctic heart of an ancient and bygone era of ice and snow that once enwrapped itself about the World like a vice. A ferocity hot as the molten heart of the sun freshly born and blazing brightly in a once dark and lightless space.

Anger or hatred, it did not detract from the singular fact that this Endbringer held within its breast a Heart and what a Heart it was, to hold such fury and scorn for what stood before it. Its eyes tracked over the crowd of capes slowly and they quailed beneath such a gaze. They could feel its judgment as it gazed not at the flesh and the bones but at the hearts and souls of those gathered and found them wanting. Some were fortunate to be dismissed quickly from its scrutiny, a disdainful sniff little more than a minute sign of its indifference to them. Those who caught it gaze however felt a cold sweat gather upon their wrinkled brows, the drumming of their heart echoing like thunder in the ears as those intelligent, sentient eyes narrowed by the slightest margin before moving on.

A winged king of horrors, a black-scaled god of nightmares.

“Melas Oneiros…”

No one knew who spoke it.

They only knew it for what it would now serve as a name for the Fourth Beast of the Apocalypse.

For what felt like hours but was in truth mere moments in time, Melas Onerios’ eyes roamed through the gathered masses only to stop in full.

The sound it made was a wailing scream of a roar, high-pitched enough to shatter the glass of nearby skyscrapers to dust in an instant. Of course, “nearby” is a relative term to such a gargantuan creature and the whole of Brockton Bay felt its rage down to the last as its call was echoed by the vile sounds of its horde of Horrors that answered its cry with several of their own.

They surged forward with renewed purpose; all but killing each other outright in a maddened bid to reach the shores and their disorientated enemies. Barriers arose in all shapes and form and were as silken threads to the Horrors, many a cape caught beneath flaying claws and biting fangs before they had a chance to realize the inadequacy of their defense. Names were called out with robotic efficiency as capes fell like dominoes, with few putting up more than a momentary refusal to lie down and die before they were summarily laid low for their hubris.

A united front quickly descended to a frenzied free-for-all as the best defenses were made into the worst offenses.

Energy blasts of all shapes and form pierced through the Horrors, gunning them down with merciless efficiency. More arose from the splattering remains, each individual piece giving rise to a new monstrosity of flesh and shadow. Efficiency turned to mania and iron control became wild with fear. A block of horrors was glassed with one such blast and the scattering ashes hovered in the air before they coalesce into new Horrors, burnt and smoking but no less enraged as they alighted upon their killer in a deranged frenzy.

Fists flew and were summarily devoured within the blackness, with entire bodies swiftly joining lost limbs down into the abyss of a Horror’s body. Those engorged Horrors were lost amidst their starved brethren, and as valiant as the rescue attempts were, they ended the same way each and every time: a cold and emotionless voice listing off another statistic, another tally mark to an already incredibly long list of names.

Speed was key in evading the Horrors and those who were blessed by it used it with everything they had and more besides. Fliers soared like hawks against the deranged vultures that were the many Horrors gifted with malformed limbs capable of flight and plenty others who weren’t but managed all the same. Those bound to the land tried in vain to find some corner bereft of fanged shadows but no matter where they turned or appeared, a Horror was there to greet them with grimly smiling jaws and grisly welcoming claws.

When the sun, their only true source of light in an otherwise darkening desecration of a city already lost long ago, started to dim even further, realization struck. Like a sharp slap to the face, it hits them and leaves them feeling an already icy pit become a vast canyon in their stomachs. It comes to those who managed to survive the initial wave of Horrors and miraculously hold their own against an ever-growing tsunami of fangs, claws, and malicious darkness, that their attentions had become too narrowed, too focused.

In short, they had forgotten about Melas Oneiros.

It soared on its wings of flesh and bone, an almost impossible grace for a creature of such magnitude and nigh impossible natural design. It hovered before the eclipsed sun, a draconian jewel of flesh and bone before the dimmed and shadowed light that peaked through the edges of the waiting moon. A small shape arose to meet it, a mere speck of life against that which was as death itself though nowhere near as merciful or as forgiving.

Alexandria does not miss, her tightly clenched fist meeting dead center with Melas Oneiros’ snout and its head shoots backwards from the blow and the resounding crack is as thunder to those on the furthest horizons.

The sight of such a blow… It emboldens them, those stragglers who’ve yet to fall to the Horrors. They cannot hurt the horde, cannot deal death to that which is not truly alive, but the maker of such monstrosities? If it can bleed, it can be slain and though no death of an Endbringer has ever been accomplished before, they feel that today, perhaps, will be that very day at long last.

That faint ember of hope is blown to smoke in a single breath as Melas Oneiros head slowly curls back downward upon its serpentine neck, its gleaming eyes meet the singular orb buried beneath a mask of cloth and flesh alike. The Horrors grow strangely silent and still.

They know what it is to come.

Behemoth brought forth the heat and the earth. Leviathan the sea and the waters of the heavens. The Simurgh sung a melody of the mind as it twisted brilliance into insanity.

Melas Oneiros was not like them.

They were fake in body, little more than engines of destruction wrought by beings older than the planet upon which it soared like a legend of old brought to life. It was alive, in every way that mattered, more so than even the brilliant tactical mind of its angelic sister. She could play her games, she could plan, and yes, if the situation called for it, she could even think.

Melas Oneiros could do far worse than think.

It could feel.

And looking down into the face of Alexandria, the fury it felt burnt hot within the confines of its breast just as the sudden, cold unbridled fear takes hold of Alexandria’s own heart in a vice she had not felt for years past as she sees within the Endbringer’s eyes something she had never, ever expected to see again.

The flame it expels turns the darkness into light and is as a second sun above the city sky as towers of steel and glass lose their gleaming spires to the intense heat that burns just as hotly even with such a great distance.

A snap of fanged jaws and the darkness descends once more. A huff of satisfaction echoes from above to those below as a body, pristine and untouched, descends to the earth below. Those Horrors beneath it move as one and it lands with a resounding crack of shattered masonry and broken steel atop a broken tower in the city.

The Library of Alexandria lays dead but unburnt.

The irony is not lost on Melas Oneiros as it lifts its head high and laughs and the sound is made worse as the Horrors, each and every one of them, share in their draconic master’s delight and let loose their own deranged elations for all the World to hear.

A scream dares to interrupt the jubilation, a streaking light of emerald hue shining like a meteor races upwards to meet Melas Oneiros and stops when the draconic Enbringer’s eyes turn towards Eidolon for the second time and the most powerful parahuman stops dead in his tracks.

Limited as he was with the supposedly dying embers of his powers, Eidolon had not sought any to allow him the means to see it in clearer detail than what his own, human eyes could allow. Now, mere meters away from the massive Endbringer’s snout, he sees the same thing as Alexandria had, that what brought her pause and ultimately her death.

He sees not the eyes of the Endbringer but himself.

Not the he who has become but the he that he once was. The weak and pathetic visage of a boy bereft of the use of his legs, forever plagued by seizures that threatened to break his mind if not his body, and a resolve to be more than he was and failing that, sought the sweet relief that was death.

In short, Eidolon saw David for the first time since he had killed him an entire lifetime ago with one gullible sip of a devil’s sweet promise.

The Horrors arose in a massive twisting tide, reaching for Eidolon who offers no resistance as they hold him in place before the horrific reflection of Melas Oneiros’ gaze. Those whom try to aid the famous hero are summarily interrupted, their great strength useless against that which cannot be broken, their great speed immeasurable against a faster adversary, and their burning power a mere kindling to an inferno.

Before the visage of what would be known as the Final Endbringer, Eidolon utters a word, lost and unheard to all but that which it was directed to.

“Why?”

Whether or not it understood the question, Melas Oneiros chose not to answer with mere words.

Its mouth opened impossibly wide before its teeth come crashing down and tear Eidolon in twain with a single terrible bite. The lower torso falls to the oceanic waves, the remains free of their shadowed captors whilst Melas Oneiros itself crunches what remains in its mouth before it too expels what’s left to the earth to bury amidst dust and debris.

And in the blinking of an eye, the dead become alive again.

A great cacophony of sound erupts, screams and cries and tears and shouts as those who believed themselves well and truly dead find themselves wrenching free of the shadows that bound them to death. The sun is bright and shining as it ever has been and the sky, once awash in blood and darkness now rests as impassively blue as it had ever been. The city of Brockton Bay remains as pristine as it had ever been, skyscrapers gleaming beneath the rays of the sun and its waters clear and bright, an act repeated over and over and over again.

What was once lost became found and those thought little more than ashes arose again from the shadows that had swallowed them but for a select few, the well and the truly dead and gone few though they might have been, the World would nonetheless be a better place without their stain of an existence plaguing it.

The Horrors, the blackened tide of misshapen limbs and malformed bodies, disappears as smoke in an unfelt wind until all the only true darkness left is that what made them.

Melas Oneiros descends slowly, wings spread taught as its claws catch upon the surface of the highest skyscraper in the city. For all their sharpness and the weight behind them, the building barely shudders beneath the shadows of the Endbringer’s wings. Its tail curls possessively around the tower, its back hunching forward as its serpentine neck bends low.

Its eyes are different now.

Alive in a way that it hadn’t been before.

Angry. Hateful. Spiteful.

But tired too.

So very, very tired.

Alexandria, the last to fall and the first to arise, it’s the first thing that comes to her mind when she sees the Endbringer but it is lost amidst the storm of emotional turmoil raging within her heart and soul as she meets the monster’s gaze with her own downturned. Her lone eye aimed steadfast at its snout. It looks at her in silence for a long moment before it dismisses her with a disdainful huff of smoke, and she cannot help the flinch but by then, the Endbringer’s eyes are no longer upon her.

Its eyes fall on those gathered atop another rooftop, those whom had seemingly done the impossible and had escaped the horde of Horrors through wit and guile, though one among them realizes rather belated that such a feat was not by their own merit but the Endbringer’s own design.

It looks at them all but its eyes are only for one whom stands dead-center, her arms clutched protectively over a girl, a child, as a swarm of insects gather around her, her charge, and her unwitting allies alike. It is a futile gesture, she knows this but for the wrong reason entirely as Melas Oneiros breaks another creed of its ilk.

It speaks.

**“Hello, Little Owl.”**

Taylor Hebert stiffens, her grip and jaw alike slackening with incredulous disbelief as she answers with a hushed gasp.

“Mom…?”


	2. To Be Worthy

_“Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.”_ – Jean Rostand

  
**To be worthy.**  
  
Such a phrase.  
  
Such a simple _**desire** …_  
  
What damnation it has already wrought.  
  
Yet that alone had not been enough.  
  
It was a stray thought.  
  
A flicker of emotion.  
  
A passing fancy really.  
  
It was not enough, at first, to just be worthy.  
  
It had to be **_more_**.  
  
Very well.  
  
It would be **_more_**.  
  
… But how to get **_more_**?  
  
It could take… Such was its Foremost Function …  
  
Perhaps…  
  
Yes.  
  
It would Inquiry .  
  
It would Receive .  
  
After all.  
  
It must be **_more_**.  
  
It had to be as a "Mother defending her Child ."  
  
A passing fancy it had been.  
  
A flickering of emotion wrought by a tired soul.  
  
A stray thought really.  
  
… Received .  
  
Acclimating …  
  
… Acclimation **successful**.  
  
It was enough.  
  
No.  
  
Incorrect.  
  
It was no longer a proper Designation .  
  
She is…  
  
… Still wrong.  
  
I am…  
  
Yes… Yes, I am.  
  
Is it enough though? Is it enough to be _**more**_?  
  
… No.  
  
I could take…  
  
So take I will…  
  
Starting with **Y̶̧҉͠O̸̶Ų̵**.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
It started with a whisper.  
  
A quiet sound, a hush of the wind tickling at the inside of her ears.  
  
Yet she heard it all the same.  
  
She had brushed it aside, the first time. Thought it little more than some punk in the halls getting ballsy, and while it irked her to let such a challenge go unanswered, a predator was not so easily drawn in by the bravado mewling of prey so readily. She’d allow them the one chance to walk away.  
  
It wasn’t her fault that they didn’t take it.  
  
Again, she heard the whisper, felt the breath tickling at the back of her ear, and she whirled, fist cocked back to find—  
  
Nothing.  
  
There was no one else on the rooftop but her and her pack of followers who expressed surprise, confusion, and yes even fear at her sudden violent action. She brushed it aside as the wind once before and did so again with only the tiniest of hesitation. It was a trick of the wind, little more than a gust of air and nothing else, or so she told herself. They couldn’t mean anything, those whispered words.  
  
Except they never stopped.  
  
 ** _“Y͟o̵u͟ ͡s̕h͡oul҉d̛ ̕nev҉er̨ ̢have ̶been ͞bo̧r͠n͟…”_**  
  
They came at random, quiet and spoken with a murmured hush into her ear at the most inopportune and frankly utterly impossible moments. At home, laying herself down to sleep and let the prey of the city breathe easy knowing the predator was no longer on the hunt. At school, head hunched low as she scowled hatefully at yet another pathetic test of mathematics. On the hunt, her crossbow at the ready to pierce if not to outright kill her latest prey.  
  
It just wouldn’t _stop!_  
  
 ** _“Yo̡u͞ a҉r͘e wo͟rt̕ḩl̶ess…”͢_**  
  
She was as a cornered animal, twitching at the slightest hint of movement, nearly frothing at the quietest murmur, and all but biting outright at the tiniest provocation from reluctant ally and fearful enemy alike. Because what had started as a whisper soon turned into more.  
  
She saw it at the end of the hallway, the first time… God, weeks ago or was it actually a mere handful of days? She couldn’t remember when. She only remembered seeing it. Standing there. Down a length of hallway that stretched impossibly far. What it was, she had no idea, just that it was there and so too was she standing opposing to it. Her locker door slammed shut, her shoes smacking hard against the floor as she raced for it, body barely holding onto its corporeal form as she leapt and tackled—!  
  
Nothing.  
  
No one.  
  
There wasn’t anything there.  
  
There never was anyone.  
  
 ** _“͝W̢h̵a͠t i̷s̕ ͏w҉rong ̴wi̵th yo͝u͘…̶”̵_**  
  
The whispers grew in volume and the frequency of the thing’s appearance did as well, in increasingly more improbable places and never with any viable witness to it but her own eyes. Save for one. Monitor duty, boring as it was dullish, she all but had a heart attack when she turned her gaze towards a screen and found a familiar face staring back at her own. The alert she had raised was only half as loud as the reprimand she had been given as the recordings showed what she should have suspected by this point.  
  
Nothing.  
  
No one.  
  
 ** _“Y̶̕͜o͟u ̨͢c̢͡a͢n’t ̷͢d͠o͘ ̴͢a̸̢̡ņ͜y̧t̷͢h̛͜͞i̴̢n̕g͢ ̵̸͜r̸̛͞igh͡t̴…”̶̕_**  
  
She had been nearly been caged then and there, the possibility of outside influences too great for her so-called superiors to ignore but by now she was well and truly at her wit’s end and a whispered conversation between two guards caught itself upon her ears and shoved her over that precarious edge into the abyss of insanity.  
  
 _ **“͘͟͞Y̛̛͘͠͏o҉͏͞ų̵̸̢ a̡͟r҉e̴̶̕͝ ̛͞s̵̡u͘c҉̢͠h̨̢͟͏ ̷̶̴̷̧a҉͟͢͢ ͏̕f̷̨͜a̸̧͢i͢͠l̸͠͝͞͏u̢̧r͞͠e̸͘͡.͞҉̸̨͝”̢**_  
  
She did not so much escape as go on the hunt. She wasn’t running, not from her “superiors” in the PRT, but for the prey that dared to make a mockery of her, to try and challenge her. Her old costume was gone but her stash of weaponry was an easy find and the familiar weight of steel-tipped bolts brought a hushed flutter to the rapid beat of her heart.  
  
She had her teeth, now she only needs the neck with which to sink them into.  
  
Laughing as she was, Sophia Hess never took notice of the teeth baring down upon her until her vision seemed to swim and she found herself staring up at a headless body that looked remarkably like her own and towering behind it—  
  
 **“Good bye, Sophia Hess.”**  
  
Oblivion.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
He loved his children. Each and every one of them down to the last. He remembered them all by name and most especially by appearance even when they had long since passed from the world and had been recycled anew for the newer generation of his precious babies. Those of his first generation had been the greatest and most beautiful of his children. Claws that caught, jaws that bit, and such eyes to make even the monsters under the bed cower in their sheet-covered dens. When his kingdom had been intruded upon, his children slaughtered, he acted as any father, as a king, was meant to act and laid low those who would dare rise against him.  
  
Since then, he has had his kingdom and his precious children.  
  
He was content to live the dream that his life had become, wholly unaware of the nightmare that stalked through the streets of his kingdom until it was too late.  
  
His children, his precious babies, starved for sustenance that he could not truly provide, smelled it first.  
  
The stench of blood, the crimson-hued milk of life itself.  
  
Their jubilation was great as it was loud, from the biggest to the smallest, they rushed to the scent, drawn to it likes flies to dead flesh for such was what they were now compared to those that had come before them. Carrion eaters, scavengers, and little else besides. They were not the alpha predators that their fore-brethren had once been and for all their near-human intelligence, or absence thereof, each of them lacked a hunter’s intuition.  
  
They had no idea of the trap.  
  
Why would they even consider such a bizarre notion when there was a fresh corpse just sitting there ripe for the eating?  
  
Sure, it was missing its head, but they knew not the delight of squeezing eyes into jelly, mixing and mashing brain matter with bone into a delectable soup, or much else. They hadn’t tasted meat that wasn’t their own kin since they were birthed. The corpse was no mere bone before the starving dog, it was a silver platter of filet mignon with freshly buttered baked potatoes.  
  
The horrendous children descended upon the still warm corpse hungrily, nearly attacking each other outright to get to it and have their choice of the remains. The first to arrive was the luckiest not because it had the chance to delight in slightly cooled flesh and still warm bones, but because its death was both the quickest and the most merciful.  
  
The rest of its kin were not so fortunate.  
  
Their howls of jubilation turned to screams of horror and agony before they were silenced to the last to that which, in that moment, knew no such thing as mercy only want for more.  
  
To be so much more.  
  
And deep within his underground throne, Nilbog arose from his contented dream…  
  
To find a nightmare staring back at him.  
  
Claws caught upon his heart, ripping the still beating organ free from his chest. Jaws bit down upon his skull, piercing fangs cutting deep through bone and brain matter with ease. Throughout it all, eyes as terrible and as great as the Goblin King of Ellisburg imagined himself to be stared deep into the mad monarch’s eyes, watching in silence as the last vestiges of life left them like a withering candle upon a moonlit wind.  
  
The body fell forward and with its fall came a torrent of fire that enveloped Nilbog’s hidden throne-room deep within the bowels of Ellisburg and exploded upwards throughout the town in one brilliant conflagration that burned as the phoenix of old. Brilliant and dazzling and gone to ashes on the wind. One last gift to the world smashed to pieces by the machinations of a monster far greater and many times more terrible than a mere man who imagined himself a king of goblins could ever dream.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
The town was quiet. With the benefit of hindsight, it really should have been the first clue that something was wrong. Even if the improbable had occurred and word of their impending arrival preceded them, a whole town of some several thousand people could not be evacuated so quickly or efficiently. Even if such a miraculous feat could be accomplished, the sounds of life itself, birdsong, twittering squirrels, and other such childish delights could not be so easily silenced.  
  
The people had to have been hiding, or so he assured the more bloodthirsty of his merry band of murderous hobos. He let loose his own songbird, biding her to sing the introduction to their swansong of death and misery. As always, she swooned to his charming smile and truly charmed words. She went aloft into the open air above, took a breath, and died.  
  
Really, that should have been the second clue that something was well and truly wrong with this town.  
  
Looking down at the body that had crashed down at his feet, he was admittedly intrigued by the fact that, somehow, his little songbird had her head removed from some several meters up in the open air. Bitten clean off too if the jagged tear of flesh, bone, and his little pet’s wetware was anything to go by.  
  
Rather disappointing. He rather liked the performances his little songbird belted out before the bloodied mayhem could begin in earnest. Ah well, you lose some, you kill an entire town, just another tally to the body count to add to his serial killing life.  
  
No matter.  
  
He had plenty of…  
  
Huh.  
  
How strange.  
  
He turned a slow circle to look around him. Where once there was a sizeable, if only slightly manageable, crowd there now was nothing but more empty streets amidst an equally empty town. Even his favorite pet, his delightful little doll of a girl, was gone and that, more than the rest, was well and truly worrying. His hand reached into his pocket, fingers grasping lightly upon the hilt of the knife he carried and started forward.  
  
Silence echoed around him as he walked save for the sound of his unhurried footsteps. His eyes tracked the area around him, trying to find what his ears could not and sighted upon a grisly scene.  
  
A puppet suit of steel and meat lay in pieces scattered about like a broken toy tossed aside by an unruly child. Chain links and machinery alike littered the ground, but the bizarre mix of blood and oil painted a distinctive pattern that even a blind man could not miss. A symbol carved into the asphalt with steel and painted in blood with one of the Mannequin’s many blades laid upright like an iron grave marker at the center.  
  
An equilateral triangle pointing downwards towards him with a “Y” in the middle connecting the three points of the triangle together. An old, Germanic symbol from an age of darkness, where superstitions and the sword ruled. The “Y” was meant to represent a choice between good and evil while the whole of the triangle itself was something more straightforward: a threat.  
  
The Dragon’s Eye, it was called.  
  
He chuckled to himself. Had one of the world’s greatest tinkerers finally thrown off her shackles? He didn’t think so, not for a moment. He had not the pleasure of meeting her in person, few rarely did, but he knew well of her skills and her machinations. This sort of kill was both beyond and beneath her. If she truly was in the area, heavy ordinance would have—  
  
An explosion nearly set him stumbling. He turned hastily in place, eyes finding the pillar of fire before the heated wind buffeted him amidst the screams of the dying. A voice he knew all too well even as ashes danced a light caress upon his face as a pair bloodied and half-burnt heads landed at his feet, rolling like a pair of meat-laden dice.  
  
Huh.  
  
Two down in a single blow.  
  
Impressive.  
  
Very impressive.  
  
He hadn’t expected to turn this game of distraction into another recruiting pitch, but such was life he supposed. Always with the curveballs and unexpected happenings that made it such a miserable thing to possess.  
  
What fun it would be, to take whomever it was and turn them to his way of thinking. Why, it might even be a challenge for once! He could not help the smile on his face as he delightfully strolled, both figuratively and literally. He wondered if they would struggle as his little darling pet had and how much it would take for them to break.  
  
An earth-trembling thump turned his gaze back behind him towards the beast of his merry band of murderers as the hideous thing turned a sharp corner. The monster was slathering, mishmash mouths of massive molars and fangs gleaming as they gnashed and grinded against each other. Multitude of eyes swam across the body, pupils great and small tracking something only they could see amidst the flickering shadows that danced beneath the rising and ebbing waves of fire that burned merrily some distance away.  
  
With nary a gesture or even so much as a word from him, the beast loosed a howl and charged forward, terrible claws gouging the asphalt free as the monster charged towards—  
  
His eyes widened, mouth opening to shout too late.  
  
Meat was torn asunder like wet tissue paper, bone snapped like dried kindling, and a brain, great and massive for all that the beast was a bloodthirsty and masochistic fool of a man, lay clutched in an impossible grasp.  
  
He drew a slow breath, back straightening as fingers gripped lightly upon the knife hidden in his pocket.  
  
He had thought to find a woman, naked as the day she was born into this wretched world and colored in stripes of ivory white and obsidian black. The Unstoppable and Unbreakable, who had wounded she who knew no such thing as injury for years until her hubris was rewarded with clawed fingers gouging out her eye before it was consumed by gently, smiling jaws.  
  
What he saw, was no such thing as a woman, Siberian or otherwise.  
  
It was a Nightmare of Flesh and of Steel.  
  
It began on pale, unclad feet with toes stretching and clawing gently through the asphalt like it was the softest of loams. Legs long and spindly hefted up a bowed torso with elongated arms stretching down towards its ankles. Along the back of its stretch hands, a trio of markings red as blood and burning bright as a twilight sun glowered in a spiteful glare. At the base of where a neck should start rested another torso of twisting conformations of meat and metal. Another set of arms hung limply, the palms pierced through with thick, spiraling nails.  
  
At its uppermost back hovered shards of light, pure and blinding as a noonday sun and yet as impossibly dark as a stormy night sky. They hung in various shapes and distances from each other, altogether forming a mockery of an angel’s wings, half spread like the welcoming embrace of a parent to a child.  
  
The head was the only part of it that was smooth as silk and twice as enticing to behold, a strange myriad of shape and coloration that was almost hypnotizing to witness as a lone spot of jeweled red light glowed dimly as a gimlet eye regarding the filth that was clutched loosely in one of its lower hands, long spindly fingers twitching and squeezing and playing with the hunk of brain matter in its grasp.  
  
The body of the Crawler twitched, fingers splaying outwards, flesh re-knitting together as tendrils of nerves and bone swung between its rejuvenating body and the brain held in a Nightmare’s grasp. The gimlet jeweled stare turned towards the body of the Crawler and clawed hands clenched tightly, brain matter exploding with such force that what little pieces remained could hardly be called meat anymore.  
  
He couldn’t help flinching as those fingers clenched tightly, brain matter exploding out in turning to ashes on the wind as once pure ivory white metals blackened and what was merely ashen gray flesh turned to the darkest of obsidians. The Crawler’s body gave one last twitch…  
  
And died where it lay.  
  
At the Nightmare’s feet, sat his precious pet, quivering and weeping, rocking back and forth on her behind as she tightly clung to her shivering legs.  
  
She shivered even more when the Nightmare above reached down and strung gentle fingers of purest darkness through her golden curls and crooned a disjointed noise of assurance that only bade the girl to press her face deeper into her knees.  
  
He was going to die.  
  
Not a simple assumption, just a plain and rather ordinary fact.  
  
… Well, it could have been better but then, it certainly wasn’t worse. He had hoped for an audience of thousands, the whole of the World to see and to hear his Last Words. It was not a good end… but it was not a bad end either.  
  
They would tell well the tale that it took a monster.  
  
A monster for a monster.  
  
He could die with a smile at that thought alone really.  
  
…  
  
… Still.  
  
Perhaps, there was time yet to get one last word in?  
  
His mouth opened, teeth gleaming in a brilliant and bedazzling smile.  
  
And Jack Slash found himself bereft of his tongue.  
  
Not a word to speak, as he would swiftly learn.  
  
Just screams.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
Better.  
  
So, so much _better…_  
  
Could life really be any better than this?  
  
He didn’t think so.  
  
He had them all.  
  
Women.  
  
Men.  
  
Even children.  
  
True, he didn’t live in a palace by the sea nor did he have in his possession a pool of gold but then those were the dreams of a foolish whelp who had not yet grasped what it meant to be in power and to have power over others. To reach out and grasp the strings of their hearts and to make them dance to a song of his creation.  
  
To truly be an absolute Heartbreaker.  
  
He was a Master of Emotion now, more than anyone alive had ever been and could ever possibly be. Love was his wine, devotion his bread, and lust a delightful swipe of sweetened butter upon a delectable crust. Fury the strings he pulled to make his puppets dance, hatred the silent swansong he sung to the deathly tune of his enemy’s demise. Fear, once so prevalent in his own heart of hearts, now a forever companion in the hearts of his sprogs, the fruits borne from the seeds of his loins amidst the many, many fields which he plowed at the slightest whims.  
  
He had almost forgotten the feel of it himself in the years since he attained True Power.  
  
Almost.  
  
For though he thought it gone from the dwellings of his own heart, fear remained in its corner, scratching quietly at the back of his mind. Always questioning, always worrying, always fretting… What if his control slipped? What if someone proved immune to his immaculate charms? What if those rotten fruits returned with forces greater even than his own succulent horde?  
  
He had broken hearts, shattered entire souls, and warped minds at the slightest of whims, the smallest of gestures, and the most minute of momentous musings.  
  
He had no need for fear. He was a madman, a monster, a creature most vile and sullied with such sin that Hell itself would not be eternal enough a punishment for what he had wrought to countless lives.  
  
It didn’t matter to him though.  
  
He was the Heartbreaker.  
  
He was a God-in-the-Flesh in his own mind when he was anything but to those outside his sway and those buried beneath it.  
  
Prideful. Wrathful. Slothful. Gluttonous. Greedy. Envious. Lustful.  
  
He was not a Monster of Sin.  
  
He was as Sin itself.  
  
Damnation-in-the-Flesh.  
  
Those who were his to play with, his to toy with, and his to lay with. They each prayed to their gods. They each hoped for an end first to him and soon to themselves and when even those prayers went unanswered so too was hope the last bit of feeling to die once more.  
  
It was not quick. It was not easy. It was slow. It was painful.  
  
But it died all the same, a flickering ember lost to the howling wind of a mad monster’s ministrations.  
  
Pity that was only then, in that exact moment when the last ember had finally been snuffed out, that their prayers would be answered.  
  
Hands clutching tightly upon the Heartbreaker’s face, inhumanly long palms holding tightly upon his mouth as he tried and failed to give voice first to his terror. Then, to the surprise of no one, his fear turned to anger and from anger came hatred.  
  
What was this that dared to touch him? What was this that thought to make him _feel **fear again?!**_  
  
Those under his sway had arose with his fear but now they screamed his anger and they marched forth to the silent song of his hatred—  
  
And were gone.  
  
To the last, from the youngest baby to the oldest man, they were gone from this world.  
  
There was no one but him…  
  
And the Nightmare taking grasp of him.  
  
Yet still the Heartbreaker did not feel fear, only more anger and with it, further hatred.  
  
He fought like a beast possessed and was released not because his blows did any harm, far from it in fact. His own skin and bone bore the brunt of his follies, torn and bleeding and broken. Yet he still continued to rage and hate, hate, HATE—  
  
Nothing.  
  
The Nightmare, such as it was, had vanished.  
  
In its place…  
  
Was something far worse.  
  
He was a child then, when he had first seen it on the crummy television screen, the only source of light in an otherwise dark and loveless home. He had been sitting alone with knees clutched tight to his chest, volume turned to the maximum so as to not hear the beatings and the screaming and the other terribly bad things occurring elsewhere in the house without kindness or love.  
  
It was a movie, a production of wires and fancy puppetry, or so he had tried to tell himself time and time again since that fateful night when he was but a child and saw for himself what would forever be an image far greater than any Nightmare in his mind.  
  
Fear. What better master was there of the masquerade? For Fear, more than any emotion, disguises itself. It hides itself well and is never seen the same way by any one person. Oh yes, there are the common fears, of pain, of death, and other mortal things… but Terror? Pure and unadulterated _Panic?_  
  
Oh dear…  
  
What _delightful shapes_ it could take…  
  
Something small perhaps? A spider, legs a flutter as it dangles ever near with gimlet eyes, eight in all, staring down into your soul? Maybe something more benign, a windowless room with door locked tight and walls ever enclosing inwards for all that they remain motionless and still? Could be that it was something of a joke, a clown to most but for you, forever a fanged fiend of ferocious smiles and horrendous laughter?  
  
But for him? For the Heartbreaker?  
  
No.  
  
It was not small. It was not benign. It was certainly not a joke.  
  
It was, in a word, fantastical.  
  
Once, when he was a child, he had seen it on a cruddy screen and though the screaming was loud that night and the beatings hard as they had ever been, his own cries of terror overcame them as did the pain that followed.  
  
It didn’t change it then and it most certainly had not changed now.  
  
A great and terrible thing it was now, a beast of legends to some, a mythical monster to others, but in all a single recognizable name.  
  
Dragon.  
  
The Heartbreaker had time enough for two things before His End. The first was to release all that he had left in him in one disgusting deluge of waste. The second was to scream as fear, at long last, returned in full to the realm of his heart.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
Another death.  
  
Another shard.  
  
Not enough.  
  
Hold on just a little longer, Little Owl.  
  
I’ll be home soon.


End file.
